How to sustain a note to end an audio clip in Soundtrack Pro

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Level 1

24 points

How to sustain a note to end an audio clip in Soundtrack Pro

This may be beyond the scope of this forum. It may be beyond the capabilities of the application, (I do plan on getting an STP training book from Apple, but I should probably get through the FCP book first!)

I'm putting together a little video, and I found a piece (Feelgood.caf) in the library that works perfectly. I mean, perfectly! About a minute into the audio file, the tempo picks up and I want to end it about twenty seconds or so after that. The problem is, the song is still going and I can't just stop it dead, because that would sound horrible! (I'm just using the first two stereo tracks in my sequence, by the way.)

What I'd like to know is if it's possible to - I guess the best analogy would be to create a "still" frame from an audio file? When the file hits that last note, I want to hold it and fade it out, even though in reality that note is only one beat.

If I was a musician, I could just figure the piece out and play the part I wanted, I suppose, but I'm not anywhere near that capable. So, as far as the sustaining that last note (that's in the middle of the song), do I have a snowball's chance?

20" Intel C2D iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.9), 2.16ghz, 2gb ram and one pesky pixel

Posted on Apr 23, 2009 11:24 PM

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Answer 1

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Merged Content 1

Level 6

11,068 points

Apr 24, 2009 9:51 AM in response to dmchord

Theoretically you could loop the note, but that never works in practice.

OT: When i'm music editing in my favorite application I often make sustained notes longer using Pitch'n'Time, but it's not available for this platform. In the screenshot you can see the sustained note's tempo being slowed down gradually so that a 3 second region is now 5 seconds.
!http://www.rdiv.com/screenshots/PnT_Sustain.jpg!

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Answer 2

Apr 24, 2009 12:52 PM in response to dmchord

Listening to the piece, I'm seeing a few options.

1) I think where you want it to end, there's a kick drum sound. Blade it right before the kick sounds. Then go to the end of the piece where the drums drop out. The last drum sound is also a kick drum. Blade it right before that kick, and put that end segment right against the beginning part. If you do it right, it just sounds like the drums drop out again naturally, then you can do a fade out.

2) Edit it before the drums come in at all, and put in the segment from the end, where it goes back to the original feel. If the energy lift from the drums is what is working with your edit so well, this option won't work for you.

3) Fade it out. I usually don't like this option for music edits - it just telegraphs that the music didn't really fit, since it didn't end properly.

None of these are what you want, of course, but they might be good alternatives.

I hope these suggestions help!

Matt

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Answer 3

JG99

Level 4

1,620 points

Apr 24, 2009 2:51 PM in response to barreltone

This is interesting. Barreltones suggestions are great. An alternative suggestion:

Have you tried using delay on the last crash cymbal or kick hit?
For small sections at the end using the Audio Stretching Tool may help, then fade out the tail.

by the way dmchord, I got the STP2 Apple Training Series Book by Martin Sitter. It's very useful. Martin Sitter also makes great video tutorials and has one series for Sound Track Pro 2 at www.macprovideo.com

Hope that helps you

JG

Message was edited by: JG99

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Answer 4

dmchord Author

Level 1

24 points

Apr 24, 2009 9:37 PM in response to barreltone

Awesome suggestion! (#1) I've done similar things with audio in iMovie, but in this case I hadn't even thought of that. Thanks!

Message was edited by: dmchord

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